“It is going to take a brave and powerful politician to tackle all the great issues of our use and reuse of water, but the hour glass is running low. The time to find and empower such a leader is right now.”

The problem is that we do not have any “brave” politicians, and there seem to be none on the horizon. Politicians see only the next election, their main interest being to gain or retain power. And, just how do we find such a person? Certainly not from the lawyers and trade unionists who seem to be the only ones interested in politics - and they seem interested only for the game of politics itself.

Most of the thoughts of this author are commendable, but he is just telling us what we already know. And as usual, we are being told that “someone’ has to do something, but unless that person can be found, if he or she really exists, all we will get is talk, talk and more talk.

These do-nothing politicians tell us that Australia lacks people with skills in certain areas. Well, we certainly lack skilled politicians!

Perhaps we should be taking what is thought of as an “extreme” view i.e. there is no political solution, so bypass the politicians

Why is a dam on the Clarence assumed to be too valuable to be allocated to farmers in the Clarence valley itself. It is their water after all and they have an equal capacity to boost production. In fact, it is more efficient and of greater economic and ecological benefit to add 5 MgL/ha to crops in a 1000mm rainfall district than it is to add 10 MgL/ha to crops in a 500mm rainfall district. For a start, you end up with twice the area of crops with a guaranteed water requirement. And the additional water is well within the natural range of variation in the coastal area but is a significant change in the inland area and comes with numerous risks.

Centralising water powers sounds great to many in the bush who suffer under the burden of metropolitan state governance but two words will curb their enthusiasm - Whitlam and Latham. One is a timely reminder while the other is a timely warning of the risks of centralised power.

NSW Farmers have the right idea by investigating the scope for a non-metropolitan state, or states, so the people who actually depend on the proper management of our rivers are represented by a government that shares that interest.

At the moment, river and water policy are play things for urban dilettantes who cannot even impose water tanks on their own community as a duty-of-care. So it is hard to see how the transfer of this "play thing" to a bunch of federal dilettantes will solve anything.

It is the regions that depend on their rivers that are left to make the best of these urban dabblings. And it is the regions, discussing their own issues, in their own style, amongst their own community of interest, that will develop the comprehensive, sustainable solutions they need.

Replace a failed state centralism with an even more remote federal centralism and kiss the bush goodby. Devolve state powers to large regions and watch how well they can work together with their own kind.

Everard Compton has a short memory.
The growing of water intensive crops in Northern Australia has been tried before:
Rice,at Humpty Doo in the 1940s - it was a failure.
Cotton,more recently in the Ord River area -it also failed.
It seems that a large water supply,while essential,is only one ingredient for success.
To my mind,it seems ludicrous that we should even be using such crops in what is the driest inhabited continent on earth.

Leave out "water" this government is lurching from one crisis to the next.

If 98% of tropical rainfall goes to the sea, that leaves precious little used by tropical plants or going into the soil. This claim is a bit amazing and unlikely to be correct, as most rainfall used globally and in Australia goes towards plant transpiration and evaporation even in the tropics.

For actual numbers, see my OLO piece "More crops per drop" a few weeks back, where these evapotranspiration flows are called Green water flows.

David Tribe

gmopundit.blogspot.com

Hell’s bells Everald Compton.

The most important initiative, that should be at the head of his list, is to strive for a stable population – to stabilise the demand for water, instead of pandering to an ever-increasing demand - to get away from the absurdity of continuous unending human expansion on this continent.

It seems that the most painful truth for people like Mr Compton is the fact that we have to stop growing sooner or later. And gee, maybe it is a good time to do it when our basic resources start to show real signs of stress. Well, it would be painful if these people even thought about it for more than a split second.

It makes no sense to continuously increase water supplies that will facilitate more and more growth, thus necessitating continuously increasing water supplies. It is the most absurd self-defeating spiral, unless we address the growth factor with at least as much vigour as the increase-in-supply factor.

“it is quite staggering that no political leader has ever emerged who will devote his or her life to overcoming all of the bureaucratic barriers which stop us building up our reserves.”

It is staggering beyond all belief that, with such high-profile water supply issues across the country that no political leaders have ever devoted themselves to stopping the continuous build-up in demand. It is all still about increasing supply, decreasing per-capita usage, and cramming more and more people in.

What would we achieve if the gulf plains or western plains of NSW were opened up? Wouldn’t it have happened already if it was economically viable? Schemes like this don’t come anywhere near being economically viable, even when just considering conventional economics, without worrying about environmental consequences - or holistic economics. Even if they were highly viable and thus successful at adding significantly to economic growth, they would just serve to facilitate a larger population, to the point where there would be no increase in per-capita economic growth.

The time to find and empower a leader in demand mitigation and sustainability is right now.